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Bird
Birds (Aves) are a class of air-breathing, warm-blooded vertebrates that lack teeth (but possess a horny or bony beak), are covered in feathers and have mastered the movement of flight, yet are not related to pterosaurs (reptiles) or modern bats (mammals). Instead, their ancestors were dinosaurs, possibly similar to the microraptors featured in Prehistoric Park, ep 3. The first bird-like creature, established by science and palaeontology, was Archaeopteryx (ancient feather), found in the limestone of Bavaria, Germany, dating around 155 or so MYA. It had feathers, wing-like forelimbs (distantly similar to the modern hoatzin bird chicks) and a rudimentary keel bone (to which the wing musculature is attached), but it also had a long, dinosaur-like tail, similar to the raptors and Ornitholestes '''from '''Walking With Dinosaurs, ep 2, as well as teeth, and, probably, a sense of smell similar to that developed in the small carnivorous dinosaurs. (More advanced birds, both prehistoric and modern - such as the vultures and albatrosses - have an acutely developed sense of smell as well.) Paradoxically, it was less adapted to flying/tree-living life style than the microraptors, and its actual relationship to the rest of the bird clan is still being debated. Iberomesornis, featured in Walking With Dinosaurs ep 4, was another early bird - an iberomesornithid - the size of a modern sparrow, with a wingspan of no more than 10-15 cm. It had a very small role in WWD, primarily as a distant cousin to the raptors also featured in that episode, probably because very little is known about its behavior. In the show, a flock of of Iberomesornis has harassed the star of the episode, the aircraft-sized pterosaur Ornithocheirus, and were in fact contrasted with it and the rest of the pterosaur tribe (i.e. Tapejara, etc). By holding a cameo of these birds, WWD revealed the difference between bird and pterosaur anatomy, how in fact they were not related at all, and how the birds will inherit the sky from these reptiles when they become extinct. Another Walking With Dinosaurs episode, the sixth, also mentions the birds while talking about the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus, and the book version of the show mentions primitive birds in ep 5, but otherwise, the only other Mesozoic bird featured by Impossible Pictures is Hesperornis, featured in the last episode of and in episode 1x03 of Primeval. It was a member of another extinct bird family - the hesperornithiforms, and was about the size of a human (2 m. tall). It was shaped roughly like a modern loon or another diving bird, but was probably even more helpess on land, than they are today, as their legs were too far back and too weak to support them on land. (Note, that in Primeval the hesperornis have no such problems, but Primeval is less scientifically accurate than the earlier Impossible Pictures productions.) Hesperornis hunted fish and squid in the Mesozoic oceans, and was in turn prey both for land-dwelling dinosaurs and aquatic reptiles and giant fish. It also had retained teeth in its beak, just like the earlier birds, and it too died out during the K/T event (or around that time), leaving the modern birds, palaeognaths and neognaths as the only bird families to survive in Cainozoic. Of these two families, only the neognaths are featured in Impossible Pictures works, and though they come from different families (Gastornis 'from '''Walking With Beasts '''was related to the ancestors of modern chickens and ducks, the 'Terror Birds '''from '''Walking With Beasts, Prehistoric Park and Primeval were giant relatives of the cranes, rails and co.), they all have the feature of flightlessness, as they had evolved in conditions where no large mammal carnivores could successfully challenge them, and the biggest of them all, Titanis, featured in Primeval '''episode 3x06, could and did challenge mammals (albeit with varied degrees of success) during the Great American Faunal Interchange, when the continents of North and South Americas had formed a land bridge (a.k.a Central America). However, they all died out in time, Gastornis by the end of Eocene epoch due to new and successful mammal carnivores, the mesonychids and creodonts, the American terror birds by the beginning of the Pleistocene and the Ice Age climate deterioration, and only a time anomaly from the '''Primeval episode 3x06 enabled Danny Quinn and others to see them in the flesh. There were other prehistoric birds, both in Mesozoic and Cainozoic eras, including the dodo '''- a distant relative of the modern pigeons and doves that too had lost flight during its evolution and died out (at the hands of humans), featured in the '''Primeval '''episode 1x04, but none of the Impossible Pictures shows has featured any of them to date. Incidentially, the show '''Prehistoric Park has also featured 'ordinary' birds of our time, including parrots, ostriches and others. When compared to the flightless Titanis that Nigel brought back from Pliocene South America in ep. 4, the contrast between the past and the present species of birds is quite remarkable! Category:Walking with Dinosaurs Animals Category:Walking with Beasts Animals Category:Prehistoric Park Animals Category:Primeval animals Category:Sea Monsters Animals Category:Predator Category:Birds